For CDR teams using the National Center for Fatality Review Case Reporting System (CRS).
This month’s tip is about Section D in the CRS: Supervisor Information. A supervisor is defined as the person who was responsible for care and control of the child at the time of the incident. A child is considered supervised if the adult was close enough to see or hear the child.
The supervision question has a response option of “No, not needed given developmental age or circumstances.” This option should be reserved for cases where the child was older than 6 years and the situation did not merit the need for supervision. For example, supervision would not have been expected for a teenager with a driver’s license who died in a motor vehicle crash.
Many infant deaths occur while the infant was sleeping or in the sleep environment. Often the supervisor was asleep as well. If the supervisor was sleeping close enough to have heard the infant and the incident occurred at night, then the infant was supervised. However, if the supervisor was sleeping at another time, such as during the day after night shift work, then the infant would not be considered supervised. In this situation, select “No, but needed” on the supervision question.